I recently wrote a piece on the Rebecca Zahau case for the Huffington Post. You can find it here. It was a follow-up to an another article I wrote for...
Jimmie Johnson
My stepfather was a Grand Prix driver on the European circuit back in the '40s and '50s. Sterling Moss was his best friend and he drove with Briggs Cunningham. He...
Rebuttals
Few rhetorical tactics carry a punch as strong as the rebuttal, whether in a courtroom, on a political stage or in a debate. The lawyer, who in the heat of...
Conrad Murray: Final Argument (Part 4)
The last phase of the final arguments I am interested in is the prosecution rebuttal. Many prosecutors don’t specifically prepare for the rebuttal and lose one of their greatest advantages....
Conrad Murray: Final Arguments (Part 3)
Here is my analysis of Chernoff’s first few minutes. It seems chopped up because that is how Chernoff speaks. He darts from phrase to phrase without finishing his thoughts. He...
Conrad Murray: Final Argument (Part 2)
The children. Prosecutor David Walgren employed a clever method of humanizing Michael Jackson by describing the pain of his death through the eyes of his children. I was surprised to...
Conrad Murray: The Final Arguments (Part 1)
There is a lot of material to go through so I am breaking it up into the parts I think important. I am starting right at the beginning with Walgren’s...
Conrad Murray: The Character Defense
Thackeray captures the thought far better than me, but the sentiment is the same; the reason I started blogging was to re-examine the basic principles of trial work to see...
Conrad Murray: Self-Inflicted Wounds or Legitimate Trial Strategy?
The defense started its case and on Monday (10/24/11), and immediately ran into a blizzard of criticism and second-guessing by the self-proclaimed legal cognoscenti debating strategy on HLN and TruTv....
Conrad Murray: The Prosecution Blunders
It is the self-inflicted wounds that hurt the most. All trial lawyers are at times confronted by evidence they can not discredit and have to live with the resulting damage....